It all started when Dan was "cc'ed" on an e-mail sent by Janet Gray (at the time an actual grad student at the Princeton English Department) to Vendi Elmen. The e-mail mentioned in passing that there had been a recent scandal involving an unnamed English Department that had purchased a forged poem supposedly written by Emily Dickinson. Janet mentioned that the English department had actually had a parade when they thought the poem was genuine.

This inspired Dan to immediately compose the following ditty:

The Fake! The Fake

Our money you did Take!

We had a parade

and gave you lemonade

You Fake! You Fake! You Fake!

Despite the lack of immediate enthusiasm evidence with those he had e-mailed this "poem" he persisted in several poems of similar quality as well as a poem that later metamorphosed into "The Forgers' Song". From there is was just a short intellectual hop skip and jump to about a 20 page script about a forger who goes to a grad school selling this fake poem. Dan's good friend's Mark and Daniel read early versions and provided invaluable feedback (such as actually naming the characters rather than calling them students #1, #2, #3 and, you guessed it, #4).

It was then a roadblock was encountered. Dan had rather blithely assumed that Mark, the musical talent of the group, would be available to work on this project. This assumption was an error. So Dan, having a Mac and having heard about programs that can convert notes into words and sound files went out and bought a keyboard and a program called Musictime.

Then there was the next obstacle. Despite successfully imitating a folk lounge singer in the act "2 Guys from the '70's" and credited with several show stopping instrumental numbers, Dan actually had not a clue about music, musical instruments or musical composition.Which is maybe why his musical input invariably stopped the show. Oh wait, there was the 20 weeks of clarinet in junior high. At any rate, with the confidence born of ignorance, Dan, who figured that music was just like talking, began to compose and quickly developed his own Theory of Music.

Dan's Musical Theory.

1. Start with one note (usually somewhere in the middle)
2. The next note either goes up, down or stays the same.
3. Repeat.
4. When you run out of words, stop
5. Small gaps between notes are pretty.
6. Big gaps between notes can either be really interesting or really really BAD.
7. Black keys are funny

Fortunately for Dan, and the people who have to sing or listen to the results, Mark was able to take Dan's simple music and turn it into very nice tunes. In the midst of this process (which took place over the course of a couple of years), Dan did something he regrets to this day.

He installed some Microsoft software on his computer.

Among other things, for some reason Dan's old Mac would no longer accept input from his keyboard. Enter Mike Schmitt. He had a brand new PC, keyboard and software that could also convert sounds into notes and midi files. So Dan e-mailed his files to Mike where Mark would make them usable. After several sessions of watching Mike's computer crash and making entertainingly random sounds (usually the latter right before the former) the music was done and it was time to recruit a cast for a read through to see if the darn thing was worth any further effort.

Doreen Wiley and JB Cohen were among the first to say, "sure". Daniel also agreed to participate and suggested that we do the read through before a live audience and get their feed back as well. After a long search to find a girl to play the role of Molly, the lead, Mark discovered Andrea Artis baby sitting his children. Mike, sitting perhaps in the wrong place at the wrong time, was elected as the professor and Nick Krall was recruited to be the forger.

After a few rehearsals, again at Mike's house where cheese proved to be the snack of choice, the read though took place March 9, 2002 at the "Theater in the Round" of San Rafael Branch of the Pasadena Public Library. It was a rousing success. Thanks to the unobtrusive yet completely audible recording of Mark Weber there exists a cd of this event.

Armed with alot of very good feedback, Dan went back and revised the script. He added three songs. Mark made musical sense of Dan's notational concepts. and so we ready to inflict it upon the world again.

My this is a wordy epistle.

At the second run through there were a few cast changes largely dictated by conflicting company softball games and other time pressures. Chris Gauntt became the forger and Sarah Kleinberg took over as Molly. In a masterful bit of navigation, Dan managed to get the cast to the performance space only 20 minutes after the read through was supposed to begin. He continues to believe that was a Good Thing in that it gave the audience a chance to know each other in the parking lot armed with the rather natural ice-breaking question, "Is this the right place?"

The performance, needless to say, went flawlessly. Except for Dan, who having the fewest number of lines, managed to mangle them anyways. There also exists a CD of this rendition of this event and if you ask Dan real nice he might send you.

In the invaluable discussion that followed, highlighted by the actors complaining loudly about the number of syllables per notes, Sarah shared that every Emily Dickinson poem could be sung to The Yellow Rose of Texas

That was just the fact that Dan needed to bring it all together. It was clear this baby was ready to be burped. So Dan wrote some more words and Dan and Mark wrote a few more tunes, and after an exhaustive Internet drive search Dan hired the truly stellar arranger Dominik Hauser to arrange the tunes. With a definite production are recording of an "Original cast album" in the offing, Dan fired Dan's backside and replaced him with another Faire friend Scott Shaw in the role of Pater. The burden of being too talented and being involved in too many projects finally overtook Daniel, who then left the project. Daniel was replaced in the role of Dirk with long time friend and multi-tonal singer Jeffrey Markle. Regretably what was thought to be a temporary cold was actually nodes on the vocal cords so Sarah also had to bow out. Dan, entranced with her performance as "The Bride" in the fortiusouly scheduled wedding between herself and Mike Schmitt, was able to acquire the talents of Margit Schmitt as Molly.

Armed with Dominik's awe-inspiring arrangements, we went into the studio to record the music and vocal tracks under the technical guidance of Rob Beaton, assisted by Mark Weber.